The present invention relates to an equipment for the formation of groups of products to be fed orderly at predetermined intervals.
In particular, the present invention relates to an equipment for the formation of groups of products, for example bar of soap or the like, to be fed orderly at predetermined intervals to a processing machine, for example a wrapping machine, to which the following description will make explicit reference without falling outside the general scope of the present invention.
In the field of soap packaging, it is known practice to feed a wrapping machine with soap bars transferred at constant intervals, even though said soap bars are irregularly produced by a dispensing machine and therefore come out from the machine at variable intervals.
The equipment used at present for feeding the soap bars at predetermined intervals substantially include: a first conveyor positioned on the outlet of the dispensing machine, which receives the products at intervals of varying length and then arranges them at intervals of a constant length along a first path; a second conveyor aligned with the first conveyor and placed at the inlet of the processing machine along a second path; and a product transfer device, for the transferring of products from the first to the second conveyor, which is controlled, during the operative phase, by appropriate control means.
The second conveyor is equipped with a plurality of pockets or slots for housing the products, the pockets or slots being distributed at predetermined intervals, along the second path and being mobile, at a constant speed, along a feeding direction of the processing machine.
The transfer device comprises a plurality of clamping units arranged uniformly at predetermined intervals along a looping third path, at least a section of which is positioned above both the first and the second conveyors.
The clamping units are mobile along the third path at a constant speed and support respective product clamping heads, equipped with suckers (i.e. vacuum-powered grippers), which are mobile, in turn, with respect to the clamping units themselves, in such a way as to approach or move away in height with respect to the conveyors. When in use, the equipment permits the removing and transferring in sequence of the products from the first conveyor, thus releasing them orderly (i.e. in an orderly manner), one into each respective pocket of the second conveyor.
The drawback of those types of equipment is that they are operatively rigid and limited, since they are not capable of transferring the soap bars from the first conveyor to the second conveyor in such a way as to position them in orderly groups into the same pocket of the second conveyor.